“The Labrynth” in Under the Glass Bell by Anais Nin

"I was eleven years old
when I walked into the labyrinth
of my diary.
I carried it in a little basket
and climbed the moldy steps
of a Spanish garden
and came upon boxed streets in neat order
in a backyard house in New York.

I walked protected by dark green shadows
and followed a design I was sure to remember.
I wanted to remember in order
to be able to return.
As I walked,
I walked with the desire
to see all things twice
so as to find my way back
into them again. The bushes were soft
hairy elbows touching mine,
the branches swords over my head.
They led me.
I did not count the turns,
the chess moves,
the meditated displacements,
the obsessional repetitions.
The repetitions prevented
me from counting the hours and
the steps.
The obsessions became the infinite.

I was lost.

I only stopped because
of the clock pointing to anguish.
An anguish about returning,
and about seeing these things
but once. There was a definite
feeling that their meaning
could only be revealed
the second time.

If I were forced to go on,
unknowing,
blind,
everything would be lost.

I was infinitely far
from
my
first
steps.
I did not know exactly
why I must return.
I did not know
that at the end
I would not find myself
where I started.
The beginning and the end
were different, and
why should
the coming to an end
annihilate the beginning?
And why should the beginning
be retained?